Smoke Notes

"Sun" is the new studio album from Cat Power. Six years after her last album of original material (‘The Greatest’, 2006), Chan Marshall has moved on from her collaborative forays into Memphis soul and Delta blues. She wrote, played, recorded and produced the entirety of ‘Sun’ by herself, a statement of complete control that is echoed in the songs’ themes.

rnrnMarshall calls Sun ‘a rebirth’, which is exactly what this confident, ambitious, charismatic record feels like. “‘Moon Pix’ (1998) was about extreme isolation and survival in the crazy struggle,” she says. “‘Sun’ is don’t look back, pick up, and go confidently into your own future, to personal power and fulfilment.”

Though devoid of grave bedroom confessionals, ‘Sun’ is possibly Cat Power’s most personal album to date. For all its layered expansiveness, it is as handcrafted as her debut, and never has a Cat Power album so paralleled her personality and state of mind, channelling her humour, anger, deep empathy, musical inspirations, technical skill, and spiritual inquiry into an album that’s both surprising and comforting.